Brazil 1 - 7 Germany

Date Stage Result 12/06/1938 Quarter Final Sweden 8 0 Cuba 09/07/1950 Final Group Stage Brazil 7 1 Sweden 27/05/1934 Round of 16 Italy 7 1 USA 21/06/1978 Second Group Stage Argentina 6 0 Peru 13/07/1950 Final Group Stage Brazil 6 1 Spain 30/06/1954 Semi Final Germany FR 6 1 Austria 27/07/1930 Third Place Uruguay 6 1 Yugoslavia 26/07/1930 Semi Final Argentina 6 1 USA Greatest World Cup Wins past initial group stage.

In a recent post here I compared some of the most outrageous events in the World Cup 2014 so far.  We had 50/1 for Costa Rica to qualify from the groups, we had 175/1 for Suarez to bite someone.  And now another 500/1 shot has just come in with the 7-1 scoreline in favour of the Germans.  This is almost on a par with Holland's dismantling of Spain, but more shocking.  It happened in Brazil.  It happened in a World Cup Semi Final.

Tomorrow the papers will come out with all sorts of tables and records, for example Brazil's greatest defeats, Germany highest wins.  The table that I am going for is the greatest defeats in world cup history.  The table discounts the first group stage.  There have been some weak teams in the groups over the years and they have been weeded out very quickly and sometimes very clinically.  So I will discount these matches.

The only result remotely close to this in recent times was a 1978 victory for Argentina against Peru.  The rest is almost ancient history.

Technically tonight was the first time 7 goals were scored in a semi final.  In 1950 there was no semi-final game, there was no final game either.  The last 4 went into a round robin group with the winner being declared the World Cup Champions.  The last group game happened to be the decider between Uruguay and Brazil (which Brazil lost).  This decider is widely regarded as the "final" of 1950.  And so Brazil's 7-1 against Sweden at the same stage of the competition can be regarded as a "semi final".  So officially but only officially Germany have the new record.